Ciaran looked down at the page before him, seeing the dark lines clearly enough and yet not seeing them at all. His mind had gone elsewhere again, toward a room upstairs, toward Ava’s mouth, which had kissed him back without fear.
“Brother,” Hector’s voice cut through the silence.
Ciaran forced his attention back to the matter at hand.
“Add that nay vengeance will be sought,” he instructed.
Hector did not move.
Ciaran frowned. “Well?”
“Ye stopped speaking.”
Ciaran’s jaw tightened. “And now I have resumed. Write.”
Hector resumed writing, but the ease of the exchange had vanished. It always did when silence began revealing more than words.
Ciaran moved back to the desk and set two fingers against the wood beside the page. It should have been simple. State the fact. Close the matter. Send the letter. Return to the dozen other burdens waiting in the wake of a broken wedding and a dead enemy.
Instead, his eyes kept catching on the same line without taking it in. A dull pain throbbed in his shoulder, persistent, and the bandage pulled when he moved too sharply. Somehow, he could still feel Ava’s hands there, careful and warm and annoyingly steady.
He reached for the sealing wax before the letter was finished.
Hector’s hand came down on it lightly. “It isnae done.”
Ciaran looked at him.
Hector lifted his hand away. “What is wrong?”
“Ye wouldnae understand,” Ciaran muttered, too quickly.
He heard the defensive edge under his answer, the admission tucked inside the refusal.
If the matter had been political, military, or practical, Hector would have understood it very well. He had been raised in the same castle, under the same losses, beside the same responsibilities. To say otherwise was foolish.
But it was said now and could not be taken back.
Hector leaned back in his chair with the patience of a man not yet willing to push, but very much willing to wait. “That sounds suspiciously like something worth understanding.”
Ciaran gave him a flat look. “It sounds like none of yer concern.”
“Aye,” Hector said. “That, too.”
The study went quiet again.
Outside the door, a servant walked by, and Ciaran could hear the sound of someone dragging something across the floor.
These were sounds that usually kept him afloat and aware of things around him, but now they didn’t. They just made him much more anxious. It was a feeling he hated, and a part of him chalked it up to the wound in his shoulder.
He took the page from Hector, read through it once, and found no fault in it worth voicing. So he signed it. Hector watched him sand the ink, fold the page, and set the seal. When it was done, Ciaran placed the letter aside and stared at it.
“Do ye think this is going to do anything?” Hector asked.
Ciaran looked up at him. “Let us hope so.”
Hector did not move to leave. He remained where he was, one hand still resting near the folded letter as though the reason he was in the room was more than the letter itself.
“Do ye think we can keep this castle safe?”
